Alina Habba’s brief and combustible run as U.S. attorney in New Jersey ended Monday, collapsing under the weight of a federal court ruling that declared she had been serving unlawfully. Her resignation, delivered with defiance, ignited yet another round of recriminations inside a Justice Department already buckling under political strain.

The Third Circuit’s decision last week set off a shockwave: judges ruled that the Justice Department could not indefinitely extend interim appointments without Senate confirmation or a district court designation. Habba, whose tenure began in March and lingered through back-channel maneuvering, became the test case for how far President Trump could stretch that authority. The panel answered bluntly—no further.

In her departure statement, Habba framed the move as strategic compliance, insisting the ruling would neither weaken her nor the department she served. Attorney General Pam Bondi, meanwhile, cast the judges as political saboteurs hobbling efforts to prosecute violent offenders and vowed to appeal the decision. If that appeal succeeds, she promised, Habba will return.

Her exit was as tangled as her rise. After New Jersey’s judges refused to extend her tenure and the state’s senators refused to return blue slips on her nomination, the bench appointed her deputy, Desiree Leigh Grace, to replace her. DOJ promptly fired Grace and kept Habba in charge. The backlash only deepened the perception of a department at war with itself.

Now, instead of a single U.S. attorney, three prosecutors—Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox and Ari Fontecchio—will split the role’s responsibilities. Their longstanding ties to Washington and, in some cases, to Habba herself, ensure that the New Jersey office remains tightly bound to political gravity far beyond Trenton.

Habba’s tenure was marked by controversy from the start. Shortly after Trump announced her appointment, she told a podcaster she hoped to help Republicans “turn New Jersey red.” Within weeks, her office charged Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Representative LaMonica McIver after a confrontation between federal agents and local officials outside a migrant detention site. The trespassing charge against Baraka evaporated almost instantly, with a judge suggesting it should never have been filed. Baraka now sues Habba for malicious prosecution, and McIver is fighting to have her case thrown out, arguing disparate treatment and political motive. A judge has allowed McIver’s case to move forward, but an appeal is likely.

Behind the scenes, veteran prosecutors streamed out of the New Jersey office. Habba, who had no criminal law experience before her appointment, leaned heavily on her proximity to the White House and traveled with a federal marshal security detail that cost taxpayers $2.3 million in five months. By late summer, morale was collapsing, cases were stalled, and judges were openly questioning whether any proceeding touched by Habba could withstand legal scrutiny.

When Judge Matthew Brann ruled in August that her authority had expired, much of the state’s federal legal machinery ground to a halt. Habba refused to recuse herself even as trials and plea hearings were postponed, leaving defendants, victims and prosecutors in limbo.

Now she steps away from the office she fought so fiercely to hold, moving into a new role as senior adviser to Bondi and an overseer of U.S. attorneys nationwide. But the shadow of her turbulent New Jersey tenure remains—an experiment in power, loyalty and ambition that ended not with a political decision, but with a judicial stop sign no amount of defiance could run.